You shouldn’t feel bad about having that spoonful of peanut butter the next time you get a craving.
A new study suggests that eating nuts, including peanuts and peanut butter, may help you live longer as nut consumption is reportedly linked with a lower risk of premature death from heart disease and other causes, according to the website Philly.com.
Although the results of the recent study, which was published online yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine, are “based on an observational study,” the finding that nuts are beneficial is a crucial detail for health buffs all around.
“The totality of evidence from nutrition and health research suggests that nut and peanut consumption can be considered a healthy lifestyle choice,” explained study researcher Dr. Xiao-Ou Shu, associate director of global health and professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.
The results of the recent study were based on analyzing the long-term health of three different populations of those living in poverty, two in China and one in the U.S., according to the U.K’s The Independent. Analysis reportedly showed that a diet rich in nuts or peanut products was associated with low levels of cardiovascular disease and low mortality.
“This inverse association [between reduced risk of total mortality and cardiovascular disease mortality] was observed among both men and women across each racial/ethnic group and was independent of metabolic conditions, smoking, alcohol consumption and body mass index,” the study’s authors wrote in their study.
In the U.S., the men and women who ate the most peanuts reportedly experienced a 21 percent reduction in the risk of death compared to those who did not regularly incorporate peanuts or nuts in their diet. In the Chinese group, there was reportedly a 17 percent reduction in mortality.
Although peanut butter may pass into the list of foods that contain both nuts and health benefits, other guilty pleasures may not be included.
“Be sure that the nuts consumed contribute to a healthy diet and are not from candy bars, sugar-covered nuts or in rich peanut sauces on fried foods,” stated Sonya Angelone, a registered dietitian in the San Francisco Bay area and a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
